a journal of reactions, insights, laughter, sarcasms, reflections, anger, love, increduility, preposterousness, and everything else under the sun (no, i'm not ambitious) by Shair (with occasional side comments from Alex).

Thursday, January 06, 2005

It's the little things...

My father died in March, 2003.

I rarely miss him, cause I hardly knew the man. In my 40 years, I spent maybe at most, 5 years total with the man. I lived with him 12 of those years, but he went to work 6 days a week and went out to "business dinners" almost every night. I use quotation marks cause I've no idea whether it really was business-related or as my mother now claims, he was out carousing with women at nightclubs.

Yet, it's the little things... Admittedly, I think more about my lost loved ones during that time of the month. Yes, I'm pms'ing like crazy - of course I am. I'm going to go see Mark this weekend and his mother. What would a weekend with Mark be like without one of us pms'ing.

Anyway, I just used a pen I picked up off the the storage shelf. And it jolted me.

The ink was a dark blue black. It's a rare color for pens, but Parker used to manufacture it for their fountain pens. They still probably do. My father and I both love that color. When I saw the color of the ink, I nearly dropped the pen. Before my eyes, my signature morphed into that of my father's, with its crisp angles, the exactitude of the slash, the indecipherability.

I loved to watch my father sign things. He always had such an air of authority whenever he signed checks, documents.

In some ways, I fashioned my signature after him. I loved how abrupt he was with his signature. How, to me, it looked like a stamp, it was so precise. I feel like a fraud at times when I sign my documents. My signature shifts every day no matter how hard I try and make it as precise as my father's. But, I realize to others, my signature looks stamped. And abrupt. And crisp. So dad, in some ways, your youngest daughter does honor you.